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Vent: spent 6 hours on an intermittent fault that turned out to be a loose cannon plug in KC-135 tail
Last Tuesday I got handed a gripe on a KC-135 at our hangar in Wichita saying the #2 VHF comm kept dropping out in flight, and of course it tested fine on the ground every single time. I pulled the rack, reseated the transceiver, rang out the coax, even swapped the antenna coupler with a known good one, and nothing showed up. Finally on the sixth hour I wiggled the cannon plug behind the rack and heard the pins rattling around in there, one of the inserts had backed out just enough to break contact under vibration. Check your connectors before you chase ghosts, people. What's your go to trick for catching those vibration only faults on the ground?
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adam1862d ago
Had a buddy deal with damn near the same thing on a -135 out at McConnell, only his was the yaw damper acting up. He chased it for two days, swapped boxes, checked wiring, the whole nine yards. Turned out to be a cannon plug back in the tail that only lost contact when the airframe flexed a certain way, and you could not make that happen sitting on jacks no matter what he tried. What finally got him there was having a guy sit in the cockpit and run the controls through full travel while he stood back there and wiggled every harness within reach. Any plug that let the pins rattle got pulled and re-pinned right there. Borescope helps too if the connector is buried somewhere you can't get a hand on.
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